Hello Historians! Im building a diorama at home of a stuka dive-bombing a convoy. What i ask you is this: what vehicles, tanks, etc were the French and British Expeditionary Force utilizing during the Battle of France / The Dunkirk Retreat? And what sort of order may they have been grouped in or what vehicle's may have been grouped together? If anyone knows of ground unit tactics or formations, that would be awesome too :)
In terms of the French Army, it really depends on what and when exactly you were hoping to portray. Of all the forces in the Battle of France, the French had one of the largest varieties of vehicles, especially in regards to the tank. Infantry divisions intended to employ primarily the Renault R35, and did in fact possess quite a few, but lack of training and supply failures meant that many divisions were instead supported by the older Renault FT. If you intend to portray cavalry, the SOMUA S35 would have been the most prevalent, but the lighter Hotchkiss H35 did see some use as well. You might also include a Renault Modèle 35 Type ZT reconnaissance tank if portraying cavalry, though there were few of them and most were lost early in the conflict. The Panhard 178 armoured car fulfilled a similar role within the cavalry. In standard infantry regiments, the Renault UE Chenillette saw use in towing light artillery, while the Lorraine 37L would have been used to supply battalions that hosted the Char B1bis heavy tank, though Cavalry regiments also saw use of it, with one for every 20 tanks in theory, but in practice there were not nearly enough built to fulfill that order by the time the battle began. Cavalry units also employed the AMC Schneider P 16 halftrack on a limited scale, but these would have been fairly rare. Similarly the Char D2 and AMR 33 were uncommon tanks, with the former being only present in one of Charles de Gaulle's batallions.
The Unic P107 would have been a halftrack that would saw heavy use in artillery batallions, as well as engineering units. Similarly, the Laffly V15 4WD and its varients saw extensive use towing artillery and supplies, primarily in an infantry support role. The V15 TCC in particular was a tank destroyer that saw limited use in the later portion of the campaign, while the V15R saw use as an infantry carrier and reconnaissance vehicle. The SOMUA MCG and MCL were another halftrack design that worked similarly, though about 400 were also employed as recovery vehicles in both infantry and cavalry regiments.
The primary workhorses of both the infantry and cavalry regiments were the Citroën Type 23, Latil B1, FTARH and M7Z1, and Renault AGC-3, AGK, AGR, AHN, and AHS being used to carry troops, along with several models built by Panhard, Peugeot and Barnard. These were also used to carry cargo, alongside the Citroën Type 45 and Latil B6, with the latter being a fuel truck. The Renault ADH and Latil M2TZ would have seen use as hospital vehicles.
Convoy order would have been organised by battalion, with little intermixing between vehicle types in the infantry divisions, though the exact order is not something I can speak to. Cavalry would have been somewhat more relaxed about this, and for the most part any sort of order would likely have been disregarded in practice in late battle phase.